


Dreaming of Sunshine AUs

by DragonsInDorne



Category: Naruto
Genre: Angst, Clan Politics, Gen, Nara clan - Freeform, Otohime!Shikako AU, ROOT!Shikako AU, Silver Queen's Dreaming of Sunshine Universe, Stasis!verse, Uchiha Massacre, VisitingTeamTen!verse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-09-18
Packaged: 2018-07-29 09:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7679851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragonsInDorne/pseuds/DragonsInDorne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sarutobi Asuma is too late to save his student during the chunin exams invasion, and as such, previously assumed dead Nara Shikako dies protecting her brother. Konoha almost unravels in the wake of the revelations.<br/>DOS AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. ROOT!Shikako AU

Asuma is too late. He’d been simultaneously detained by Oto nin and drawn to a specific area by them leaving to trail after someone else, and comes too late to save his student.

  
Given the number of bodies in the clearing – at least a dozen, in various states of violently mangled, more death and gore splattered in the trees leading back towards the arena, this was a vicious, one sided fight.

  
Shikamaru is kneeling, wide-eyed and shaking, struggling to restrain the last living oto-nin in his shadow jutsu, who Asuma hurries to finish off. Once the body drops and Shikamaru sags, Asuma realizes exactly how he survived an encounter with twenty-something chunin level enemies. There’s a dead shinobi – no, a kunoichi with a long, dark braid, sprawled at Shikamaru’s feet. She’s covered in too much gore to be all her own, but it’s still easy to recognize the distinctive body armor of Konoha’s black ops, and what the hell – ANBU isn’t supposed to take kids this young, and she can’t be any bigger than Shikamaru himself.

  
And she’s driven – must’ve been a true spitfire, to take on so many opponents and win, to keep a single unknown genin alive. He can see why ANBU wanted her, because if she’s this good at Shikamaru’s age, it must mean she’s been training longer than Konoha’s age restrictions should allow for. And Asuma remembers what Kakashi was like from his stint in black ops, washed out and _so tired_ , but this one – she’d have been magnificent. She could have rivaled ANBU Hound’s legend one day, and it’s such a fucking shame.

  
A shame, because she’s lying sprawled in front of his student, a wind jutsu having torn open her throat and clean through her chest plate. Asuma checks her pulse, and yep – no heartbeat, no chakra, none of the telltale signs of life. They’re too far from the hospital and Asuma’s too poorly skilled at medical jutsu to attempt to resuscitate her.

  
“Sensei-” Shikamaru chokes. He’s shaking, the jounin realizes abruptly. “She just-”

  
“It’s not your fault, Shikamaru.” He consoles. He rearranges the dead kunoichi’s limbs, and then pulls off her mask, simultaneously reaching for a corpse scroll, because regardless of her death her presence raises uncomfortable questions-

  
Both he and Shikamaru freeze in shock, because regardless of the blood and grim determination of the girl’s expression, regardless of the fact that she looks barely twelve – she looks like Shikamaru. She looks like Nara Shikaku, like Igaku and Kofuku the rare times Asuma’s caught sight of them, entirely too much like Nara Yoshino for this to be a coincidence. The dark hair, the straight nose, the forehead, the shape of the eyes and the lips – an amalgamation of his student’s entire family.

  
(Shikamaru isn’t read into the situation until it’s over, doesn’t realize the truth on his own, but he suspects, lets Ino view the memory because no one can look like him that much without some relation, fight so hard to keep him alive for no reason. He considered, briefly, that one of his cousins had been folded into black ops and he’d never heard of it, but deep down he knew the truth, simply never wanted to voice it.)

  
Sarutobi Asuma brings the dead kunoichi to the hospital in a corpse scroll, where Nara Igaku does a blood test and finds a very nasty seal on her niece’s tongue (the niece her Hokage had sworn was deceased, too, and that is very, very incriminating.) Ibiki gets reeled into the situation, and then Inoichi comes to confirm her identity and then do a brain scan. A scan which reveals an astronomical amount of spiritual manipulation, which may have caused permanent damage if his best friend’s daughter – _his best friend’s daughter_ , Ino’s age, fuck this is Konoha not _Kiri_ – had lived to bear through it. But plenty of things aren’t hidden, like the many missions Danzo had his agent complete, like his graduation test and where he hides all the little graves.

  
Ibiki does a very thorough investigation, not only of most of Konoha’s departments, their mission intake, their budget allocation, but also clan rosters and where these people are deployed (and which ones are dead, and how many of those actually got folded into ROOT because they showed promise or because the Sandaime gave Danzo explicit permission to act in Konoha’s interest.) Then they storm the various ROOT bases that Inoichi finds in poor Nara Shikako’s head. Shimura Danzo is killed (violently, and with extreme prejudice) which also reveals the sharingarm and kekkei genkai theft, and also his connections, past and _present_ to Orochimaru (Anko delights in destroying _three_ of his eyes, which, among the Jounin who participated in taking down their very own councilman, is the record.)

  
(Later, Shino will find out about Shikamaru’s twin. Kiba will find out about Shino’s cousin. Hinata will find out that the Kumo shinobi got past so much of village security to kidnap her because Danzo was trying to destabilize the peace talks. Neji will find out from Hinata. Sasuke will find out about his clan. Ino and Shikamaru will learn that their parents, and many member of the intelligence division were compelled into taking actions that covered up illicit missions and acted on Danzo’s orders without their knowledge or consent. Slowly, the Konoha twelve will close ranks, and while many of them will like and respect Tsunade, this will have broken their thoughtless trust in the safety of _home_.)

  
Inoichi gets Chouza’s help to read Shikaku in, who directs Danzo’s disgraceful and gory topple from his shadowy throne. Utatane and Koharu are taken in alive, to face justice for breaking the values Konoha nin swear to uphold, especially in regards to protecting their own. Also, in many acts of treason against the Sandaime. Mostly, the Sandaime is very lucky he is dead, and died protecting the village from his edo tensei’d predecessors, because then, they’d have a true civil war on their hands, the clans united in their outrage at the actions of their leaders. A civil war that Uchiha Itachi had singlehandedly prevented by following the orders of those he’d been raised to believe would make the right decisions in protecting their own. And _oh_ , the Uchiha clan.

  
(“I thought she was dead,” Shikaku will tell Inoichi, later, over sake. "I should never have stopped looking. I should have _seen_ -”)

  
(Sasuke won’t attack Itachi, when they meet in Otafuku-Gai. He’ll shout, he’ll rage, because the one person who saw him, loved him unconditionally and swore never to abandon him _left him behind in the village that had destroyed their family, Itachi, why didn’t you_ take me with you?)

  
(Shikamaru will find out the truth, when it’s all over, and maybe he’d have recognized his sister if he’d known she’d even _existed_. In this world, Shikamaru will study medical jutsu with a fervency to rival Sakura, because he dreams of his twin’s blood on his hands every night, and maybe if he’d ever applied himself, used his prodigious brain for _something_ that mattered, for once, he’d have been able to save her. And, secretly, subconsciously, he’ll hate his jounin-sensei for not arriving in time to save Shikako.)

  
(Yoshino finds out her daughter – her daughter who screamed and choked and suffered as an infant, who followed her brother everywhere, who was _taken_ by a Kumo shinobi after he’d bested her – she finds out her daughter survived to die for her son. It’s the single most heartbreaking revelation of her life, hurts even more than losing her the first time, than losing hope. She may only be an able-bodied chunin by technicality, and technically retired, but she’s still part of the team to kill Danzo, and plays her part in clearing the ROOT bases. She also finds her daughter’s room, utterly devoid of personality. In this world, Nara Yoshino will be too heartbroken to keep trying for another child.)

  
When Tsunade finally gets read in as Hokage, she has no sealed black ops members parading as her shinobi, no elders and no traitors. Her last loyal Uchiha is lobbying for his brother being declared a legal Konoha nin again so he can be brought home, and simultaneously swearing that if anything like what happened to his clan is ever done again, to _anyone_ , they will have to answer to _him_. (Sasuke is very angry he did not get to kill Danzou himself. Anko regales him with gory tales of his death anyway.) The clans of the village hold much more power than they ever would have, in any other reality, and for years there’s a fine line between violence descending among the village sections to turn it into the bloody mist. When Tsunade finds out Danzo not only stole genetic material from her grandfather but was also complicit in the deaths of Nawaki and Dan, in a ploy to break her will, many, many desks will be broken, and anyone suspected of acting similarly to Shimura Danzo in ‘Konoha’s best interest’ gets to spend the long weekend with T &I.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, so it started as angst for an earlier mention on the DOS recursive thread of an AU in which ROOT Shikako dies protecting Shikamaru, but it descended into an examination of the following political shitstorm because that’s apparently a thing I really like. Based of Dreaming of Sunshine by SilverQueen, and off the AU in which Nara Shikako is kidnapped at age two when she poses as her brother, and is folded into ROOT. Will also be posted on the recursive thread.


	2. VisitingTeamTen Verse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the prompt where Team Ten gets thrown into different AU verses, and they can only interact with each other and never sleep - but they can watch the world around them. This takes place in the Oto-hime verse, and is based on 'In Which Someone Attempts To Kidnap Shikamaru' by donahermurphy on Fanfiction.net.

“Do you want to tell me why, when my sister asked for her name, _I didn’t know it_?” The paralyzed version of Shikamaru rasps, limbs lax on the hospital bed. The expression on Shikaku’s face is horrifying to watch, grief and denial and confusion.

“Yes,” Shikamaru grunts, Ino clinging to one shoulder, Chouji flanking him. “Yes, finally, you moron, it only took you _four months_.” And moronic not-Shikamaru’s protective sibling instincts are finally kicking in, too. Funny he had any, having been raised as an only child.

 

“I don’t know why I believed him,” Shikaku rasps, rubbing his face in his hands. It does nothing to conceal the grief in his tone, and Ino doesn’t want to watch this, listen to this. This is enough fodder to keep her nightmares vividly interesting for months, and for once, she’s glad none of them can sleep. “You never did.”

Her father drops a hand on his friend’s shoulder, an odd expression on his face. Calculating, sharp. It’s enough for Ino to metaphorically sit up and pay attention. “Outsider’s perspective. If it had been Ino…” he trails off, and Ino shivers, because watching the twins go through this is bad enough, she can’t imagine living it. “And I don’t interact with the high-rollers in the Hokage’s Office like you do, so there’s less of a rapport,” Inoichi adds.

He’s frowning, and Ino feels the vivid impression of ice sliding down her spine, her verterbrae freezing her immobile. _An iron-clad assurance on something where there was doubt, or he lied_. Ino feels like she stepped into the river only to discover it was full of angry kiri-nin, the sensation of tripping into something awful and dangerous that she really hadn’t wanted to know about in the first place.

Ino drags herself out of her funk of paranoia and contingency plans and how much overlap between their universes to hear Shikaku-oji say “I _know_ she’s out there. But whenever I make a plan to bring her back, it’s like there’s a part of me saying ‘she’s dead, stop looking.’”

 

_Oh_ , Ino thinks, and then _oh no_.

 

“Ino?” Chouji asks, but Shikamaru’s eyes are hard, assessing. He knows something is wrong, his prodigious mind spiraling into tangents and plans already.

“We need – when we go home, we’ll need to-“ God, she can’t, she can’t deal with this. She’s barely thirteen, a brand new chunin, and maybe one day she’ll inherit the Intelligence department from her father and Ibiki, but she isn’t ready for this. None of them are.

Is this what it’s like to be a war genin? To be so hopelessly outmatched but still be sent into the field? But in war, the threat is beyond Konoha’s walls, not sitting in a position of power inside her own home.

“We’re going to need to activate the regency protocols.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also posted on the recursive Fanfiction, pg 247  
> PS: I headcanon the regency protocols that Inoichi uses in the fic of ‘In which someone tries to kidnap Shikamaru’ as not just a yamanaka head to heir thing, but an actual thing – maybe among clan heirs, maybe just the heirs of the Ino-Shika-Chou, or maybe it’s a thing with younger ninja going into intelligence. But basically, the regency protocols are a protocol for shinobi to use when they suspect either treason really high up in the ranks, or when the Hokage is being controlled or not acting in Konoha’s interest, eccetera. A protocol where investigating and replacing the leaders of the different departments/the village is necessary.


	3. Stasis Verse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From the Care!Kako AU, in which the Ino-Shika-Cho is put into stasis due to delibitating injuries during the Kyuubi attack by Orochimaru

Shikaku wakes up.

Shikaku is still alive.

The village is rebuilding, but not from the Kyuubi. Apparently it’s been nearly twelve years, the Kyuubi was defeated by the Yondaime’s sacrifice (Minato and Kushina, his friends,) and the recent construction is actually from a combined Sand/Sound invasion. The Sandaime is dead, and Senju Tsunade has returned to claim the hat. Apparently Orochimaru defected, but the Saindaime was too soft-hearted to kill his old student, and essentially let an S-class Jounin of then no equal to become a traitor. (It came back to bite him in the ass eventually, and Shikaku starts losing his goodwill and faith in Sarutobi. A lot of deaths could have been prevented recently if he’d done his duty. Yet more proof it was past time for his retirement.)

Yoshino is dead. Has been, for a very long time.

His children are not.Igaku lets them in, after spending a few minutes with him under the pretext of checking his recovery (his sister has gotten so old). She thankfully takes the time to inform him of the situation, for which he is grateful, because his children don’t deserve the brunt of his anger. Not even his sisters were at fault for this, when they and Sembei-obassan were apparently the only Nara to ever lend a hand.

His children are alive.

“Dad,” Kako says, first to step into the room, followed by a preteen shadow that looks just like he did at that age. Tall and looking so much like her mother, Kako is seconds away from crying.

“Kako,” he says quietly, and stands from the edge of his hospital bed. He gets an armful of almost crying kunoichi, and presses a kiss to the side of her head. She’s still wearing her hair in a long braid, a chunin vest and normal gear except for a few extra sealing scrolls here and there, and something clipped to her belt he suspects may actually be the sword of the thunder god. She’s got scars on her face – two scratches on her right, one on her forehead and the other curving under her eye towards her nose, and they look years old. She’s too skinny too, wiry and muscular and a slightly too angular face. Skinnier than Yoshino had been, and his daughter is almost the age he had been when he met her mother. Rough around the edges and scarred, older than she should be and quietly crying into his shirt.

“It’s okay, deerheart,” he murmurs into her hair. “You’ve grown,” he murmurs with wonder, and he missed that. He’s not dead, thank the Sage ( ~~actually, Orochimaru, but~~ ) but he missed his daughter’s entire life and now she’s a stranger that’s too skinny and almost as tall as him, and he may be almost crying too.

“Here,” she pulls away slightly, fingers still curled possessively into his shirt, and then says, “Come say hello, Kamaru.”

His son is watching him, with an edge of wariness and hunger and wonder. He’s about the tail-end for graduating age, and if he’s any Nara at all he’d have taken advantage of the leeway to stay in the academy as long as possible. ( ~~He’s not a Nara, actually~~ ) His hair is up in a customary spiky ponytail, and he’s wearing a new chunin vest too, for all that there are subtle differences with his sister to the trained eye. For one, all of his gear looks impeccable, and he knows ( ~~thinks~~ ) that children grow fast so replacing all of their gear to keep him clothed and armed with the very best must have been a strain. His hands aren’t as scarred or callused, and he’s more open and soft with his body language.

When he closes the distance and presses his forehead against Shikaku’s heart, curling a hand into his sister’s vest-

Shikaku doesn’t know what to think.He’s alive but he missed raising them and they’re his children and yet total strangers too. Is Kako still a perfectionist? Does she still maintain that no, she’s not a genius, just bored, and try as hard as she did not to be recognized as anything beyond normal (it’s true and not true, graduated at six without even spending a full semester in the academy, and then a nearly indistinguishable service record ever since. Igaky let him read her file, and his heart _hurts_ -) What about Shikamaru? He knows next to nothing about his son, only that he’s got a devoted sister and nearly no one else that’s not his age. Does he play shogi? He knows some clan jutsu, but only because the Nara’s insistence and Kako was cunning enough to include herself in the training, all under Sembei’s watchful eye. But –

He doesn’t know his children.

No. He knows enough. They grew up alone and under all of the hardship of a single shinobi with a barely notable career trying to support a child. They have no mother. Right here, in his arms are the last remains of Yoshino.

He will never let them be alone again. If anyone wants them, wants to touch them, they will have to pry them form the protection of his cold, dead body, and every single protection his prodigious mind can bring to bear. They are his, they are all that he has left, and he is very, very motivated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From the Stasis verse, an AU from Silverqueen's Dreaming of Sunshine. Also posted on the recursive thread on Fanfiction.net.


End file.
